When I was little I was raised by this little thing called TELEVISION, you may have heard of it. It’s true. I had four working parents and so we were left in the capable hands of my maternal grandparents who spoke half-German, half-Yiddish, half-English (come on, it was the 80s, the math doesn’t have to add up) and who loved three things: feeding us junk food, reading quality magazines, i.e., The National Enquirer, and watching the boob tube. At the time I felt lucky. My grandparents allowed me to sit thisclose to the TV watching whatever I wanted while I shoveled such fancy dinners as pizza bagels and frozen waffles into my pre-teen gob.
Even know, it kind of shocks me when I come across a movie or a tv show that I haven’t seen. Because I saw it ALL….I wasn’t picky. I watched Y&R with my Zayda…”Leesheenu…Victor Newman teaches me the English, you see?” That’s what he called me. Leesheenu. I watched game shows with my Bubbie because, you guys, she would have kicked ass at all of them. The woman couldn’t speak English to save her life, but she could solve every Wheel of Fortune puzzle and knew the price, down the dollar, of every single product shown by Bob Barker’s chesty assistants on The Price is Right. My bubbie, she dreamed of going to LA, just so she could sit in the audience of a game show. Dream big, she did. I watched MASH with my mom…every single damn episode and LA Law with my stepdad and every scifi and action movie my dad had on laserdisc and the weepy after-school special, Monday night movie-type with my stepmom, cartoons with my brother, teen shows with my sister.
And it shocks me when I come across a movie or tv show that no one else on the entire planet has seen. Like Welcome Home, Roxy Carmichael. I quote that movie all the time; when Dinky Bossetti says, “It’s good to want things” and no one has any stinkin’ clue what I am talking about and I refer to Melissa Ethridge’s “I Will Never Be the Same” as “In Roxy’s Eyes.” And there’s the other Winona Ryder movie…the other movie with Jake Ryan in it where he still wears sweaters and looks all hunkilicious and they have sex in the church bell tower while little Christina Ricci almost drowns. oh, and Cher is in it too.
And nobody on earth, with the exception of my brother, has seen Monster Squad and understands my love for Andre Gower and when I say that Wolfman’s got nards, I get THE LOOK from people, but mostly I just feel bad for them that they don’t know from its wonder. And I know that no one else saw Pet Sematary at least 87 times. And I guarantee that no one else in fourth grade knew who Tim Curry was because no one else had seen Clue or that TV movie, The Worst Witch
that is so much better than ANY Harry Potter movie you will ever see, even the one where Robert Pattinson makes his pre-Edward appearance. And has anyone out there seen Hello, Again? You know, the horrific Shelly Long movie where she comes back from the dead to cause chaos and wonder what’s happened on Knot’s Landing? No? No one?
And I know people try to say that they used to watch The New Mickey Mouse club but they are totally liars and they totally didn’t and now only pretend to have watched it because Britney Spears was once on it. But, really, they are just liars, because they weren’t ridiculous like I was and taped it every single day and still has about 17 vcr tapes with shitty quality recordings of every. single. episode. I bet you know none of those liars knows what Emerald Cove was and I bet they don’t know who Matt Morris was when he sang Hallelujah for Haiti with Justin Timberlake this week. And no one else watched Kids Incorporated and knew who Fergie was back when she was still called Stacy and who Jennifer Love Hewitt was back when she was called Love. K I D S yeah!
OH! and that movie with Kirk Cameron and Dudley Moore where they switch places! and the one with Fred Savage and Judge Reinhold where THEY switch places too!
Admit it, you are kind of jealous of my childhood.
Or maybe you are a little bit afraid of me.
Either way. I’m off to stuff my face with frozen waffles and pizza bagels.
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